Cheap Trick Reportedly Releasing a Christmas Album

Cheap Trick are reportedly releasing a Christmas album later this year.

In a new interview with Orange Amps, which was subsequently linked to on the holiday-centric site Stubby's House of Christmas, bassist Tom Petersson shared that the band wrapped up a holiday LP "about two months ago," and it should see the light of day "around Halloween."

"It just seems very natural for us, I can’t really explain it," Petersson says of the band's creative drive. "People will ask for advice, and I just don't have any. We love recording and writing together, and we always search for that perfect record which you can never achieve, so I guess that might be one of those things that keeps us going. There’s always room for improvement and change."

Although Petersson was mum on the holiday LP's track listing, he did drop a couple of tantalizing hints, noting the band did "a standard," among other things. "We’ve got a few originals, and we covered songs from artists that we really like which have done Christmas songs we think’s really cool, you know, Roy Wood and that sort of thing," he said, which seems a likely reference to "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday," a song Wood did while in Wizzard back in 1973.

"The only confusing thing about recording this record," Petersson added, "is that every song had the word Christmas in it, so we could never keep it straight during recording, trying to figure out which song was which: ‘Okay, guys, so let’s do the Christm…... the sleigh song next.’"

Further details on the LP are scarce, although Cheap Trick apparently confirmed the news on their official Facebook page by sharing the Stubby's blog post with the tagline, "Prepare yourselves for a Cheap Trick Christmas!"

Releasing a Christmas LP makes sense for Cheap Trick. The group has sold holiday merchandise, such as a globe ornament with the Cheap Trick logo, in the past.

And, on the musical side, Stubby's points out that in 1996, the band released a seasonal-themed single, Gift, featuring the songs "Come On Christmas" and "Christmas Christmas," and redid "I Want You to Want Me" as "I Want You for Christmas" in 2012, in honor of the 25th anniversary of A Very Special Christmas. No word yet on whether any of these tracks will also be on the holiday release.